How AI Is Changing the Way Engineering Teams Work

How AI Is Changing the Way Engineering Teams Work

From The Tech Trek by Elevano

May 6, 2026 · 29 min · Episode 663

About this episode

Krishna Sai discusses how AI is transforming the roles and responsibilities of engineering teams.

Krishna Sai, CTO at SolarWinds, joins The Tech Trek to talk about one of the biggest shifts happening inside IT and engineering teams: AI is moving people from operators to orchestrators. The conversation goes beyond faster code and automation. Krishna explains why AI is changing how teams think about systems, governance, validation, observability, and the skills technical leaders will need as work moves from manual execution to higher level oversight. Key Takeaways • AI is raising the level of abstraction for IT and engineering teams. The work is shifting from operating systems manually to designing systems that can increasingly run, adapt, and respond on their own. • AI does not automatically reduce workload. In many teams, it changes the type of work by moving effort from execution into validation, judgment, risk management, and governance. • Code generation is only one part of the delivery system. Without testing, security review, observability, and strong engineering process, faster code can create more problems faster. • The best AI outcomes depend on strong foundations. Clean data, connected systems, clear ownership, and resilient architecture matter more as AI becomes…

People in this episode

Host: Elevano

Guest: Krishna Sai

Topics covered

  • AI in engineering
  • IT transformation
  • systems thinking
  • automation
  • governance
  • technical leadership

Keywords

  • AI
  • engineering teams
  • automation
  • systems governance
  • technical leadership
  • code generation
  • observability

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: SolarWinds

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